Aleppo's Last Hope

PhotographerSebastiano Tomada

PrizePress / Photographer of Year

Entry Description

More than three years after the start of the war in Syria, the
country's second-largest city, Aleppo, is nearly a ghost town.
Whole swaths of the city are abandoned and lie in ruin. The
civilians who remain in the city live a life of fear and grief as their
families, friends and neighbors are killed and wounded by
President Bashar al-Assad's campaign to regain control of the city.
The latest wave of this attack has brought with it an intense and
deadly barrel-bombing offensive from the skies. The crude, highly
inaccurate devices can wipe out entire buildings and are often
dropped in quick succession, presumably with the aim of targeting
those attempting to rescue victims of the first explosion.
Among those rescuers are members of the Civil Defense team,
who, for over a year, has been rushing to the site of Aleppo's
bomb blasts. Trained by organizations based in Turkey, the
volunteers evacuate the injured, clean up the bodies of the dead,
and fight fires. What they are best known for in Syria and abroad
are the dramatic rescues - survivors pulled from beneath the
rubble. In the summer of 2014, photographer Sebastiano Tomada
spent eight days in Aleppo with these volunteers, a tight-knit band
of brothers who risk their lives to save those of others.